Out of Ugly Things
by tillthelastgasp
Summary: It was hard work, being a husband and a father but the last twenty years meant nothing if moments like this didn't happen.


I orginally posted this on Tumblr, so if it looks familiar then you may have read it there…Enjoy!

"What is this?" Jeff asked as he dropped the brown paper bag onto Nick's desk.

Nick didn't look up from his laptop screen. "It's Gracie's lunch that she didn't eat again today."

"You can't keep making her strange lunches just because you want her to eat healthier. She's seven; she's just going to choose not to eat it which is why I had to leave work in the middle of the day to bring her something to eat."

Nick typed a quick sentence and glanced up at Jeff. "She could have eaten school lunch."

Jeff rubbed his face and sat down on the corner of his husband's desk.

Nick's office was a good mix of contemporary style and old soul. His desk was long and made out of a deep cherry wood. He had a black leather couch on the opposite wall and a glass coffee table in front of it. His walls were covered in bookshelves that stretched from the door to the back wall. The opposite wall was a large window that overlooked their backyard.

This conversation, about what their children ate, had been repeated many times over in the Duval-Sterling household. Nick couldn't help himself, his life's work was spent educating people about eating healthy and his family ate as if the only food group that existed was the one made entirely out of nutella and marshmallows.

Nick leaned back in his chair and smiled up at his husband. "What do you mean you had to leave work in the middle of the day? Her school is across the parking lot from you, it's not like it was a long walk."

"I had to run! Her lunch hour is in the middle of my Sophomore English class!" Jeff explained. "I had eleven minutes to go to the diner, get her food and drop it off."

He flipped his hair out of his eyes and sighed loudly. Nick reached up and wrapped his hand around Jeff's neck tie. He tugged on it gently and Jeff fell into his lap.

"You're cute when you're stressed out."

He placed a sweet kiss on Jeff's jaw. Jeff moaned and pushed his neck towards his husband's lips. Nick caught on quickly and started trailing kisses down Jeff's neck, stopping only to suck every few centimeters. He buried his fingers in Nick's hair and pulled his face up so that he could kiss his lips. They didn't get many moments like this anymore so they both took advantage of it knowing that it was fleeting and precious.

"Dads!"

Jeff pulled away and groaned.

"We're up here, Jack!" Nick called.

The door swung open and Jack, their fourteen year old son stood before them in a muddy football uniform.

"How was your audition?" Jeff asked as Nick spun the chair so they could both see him.

"Can you not be like that right now?" Jack asked as he dropped his helmet to the ground. "And it wasn't an audition, it was a tryout, dad. It's football, not a musical."

Jeff stood up and sat down on the edge of the desk again.

"Judging by the happy expression on your face, am I wrong to assume that it didn't go well?" Nick asked.

Jack groaned and sat down on the couch across from the desk. He peeled off his socks and shook the dried mud off them. He dropped them on the carpet and Nick grabbed Jeff's hand to keep him from yelling at their son for tracking mud through the house. Now was not the time.

"It went fine, I made the team. Whatever, listen, I have another issue," Jack explained.

"That's great!" Jeff exclaimed as he took a seat next to Jack on the couch. Nick came out from behind the desk and leaned on the front of it as he crossed his arms over his chest. "When is your first game?"

He stared at his father for a moment before deciding to ignore his question. "Lucy is trying to ruin my life, why didn't you just stop having kids after me?" Jack asked seriously.

Nick and Jeff both laughed and exchanged a look.

"You two came as a pair, we couldn't just stop after you," Nick explained. "You're only six minutes older that her."

Jack rolled his eyes and flopped back against the couch. Dried pieces of mud sprinkled off his uniform pants and onto the black leather.

"How is she trying to ruin your life?" Jeff asked as he started brushing the pieces into a pile.

"She's friends with Maggie."

Jeff scooped the pile of mud droppings into his palm. He stood up and crossed the room and slipped them into the trash can. He was practically crawling out of his skin at the mess Jack was making but he bit his tongue because this seemed to be more important.

"I fail to see how this is ruining your life son," Nick said and Jeff laughed as he joined his husband by the desk again.

"Because I love her," Jack explained as if that was the most obvious part of the conversation.

Jeff nudged Nick's arm with his elbow and smiled at their young son. This was something that Nick and Jeff talked about almost as often as they did the horrible tasting food that Nick constantly made them eat. They had known about Jack's intense love for Maggie for a while now but he had never actually told them about it before this moment.

Maggie had lived down the street from them ever since her parents divorced and her mother moved into the yellow house on the corner. Over the past four years they watched Jack go from pulling her ponytail and calling her a dork to staring longingly at her anytime she walked into their house.

"You're gonna need to elaborate on this one, I still don't understand how she's ruining your life," Nick stated.

"Lucy keeps inviting her over here and I know, I know," he emphasized as he poked a finger into his chest. "She's going to tell Maggie!"

Jack threw his arms in the air, defeated and Jeff and Nick tried not to laugh at their son's frustrations.

"Telling someone you love them isn't a bad thing," Nick said as he wrapped an arm around Jeff's waist.

"Oh my God dad, you don't get it! If Maggie finds out that I love her then…" he struggled to find the right words. "You don't get it! Never mind!"

He stood up and stomped out of the room, leaving a trail of dried mud in his wake.

"Your son is very dramatic sometimes," Nick laughed as he sat back down in his desk chair. "I wonder where he gets that from."

Jeff laughed. "Certainly not me." He sat down on the edge of the desk again and picked up the brown paper bag. "This smells like rotting garbage." Nick grinned at his husband hoping that Jeff just realized he was being as dramatic as Jack.

"It's a sprouted grain wrap with red kale, soybean sprouts and hummus," Nick explained as he pulled the perfectly wrapped tortilla out of the bag and showed it to Jeff. "What did you feed her instead? A cheeseburger and fries?"

Jeff nodded. "And a chocolate shake."

Nick sat back in his chair and tossed the wrap in the garbage can next to him. "Push over."

Jeff laughed as he sat back down in his husband's lap. "She's got that look that you always used to give me." Nick raised his eyebrows and gave Jeff a questioning look. "You know what I'm talking about. The look you always gave me when you wanted us to skip Warbler practice and stay in our dorm room."

He gripped his husband's collar and pulled his face down so they were eye level with each other. "We could relive those days right now," Nick said as he pressed a quick kiss to his lips. "If you're up for it."

Jeff moaned as he kissed Nick again. "I don't know baby, I'm getting old, and I don't know if I could handle that anymore."

Nick laughed. "Oh God, remember that one day?"

Jeff laughed and nodded. "I felt that one day for a week. What was it, four times?"

"Five, I think."

"We were so young," Jeff murmured.

They had been married for sixteen years but had been together for almost twenty. They were young when they got married, both only nineteen but they had known from the very beginning of their relationship that they were it for each other. They had Jack and Lucy when they were just twenty one. They were very young and had no idea what they were doing but the result had been their two oldest children and as much as they struggled in the beginning, they wouldn't have changed that situation for anything.

Although they were twins, Lucy and Jack were very much opposites. Jack was dramatic and expressive while Lucy was calm and collected. She was very driven, always brining home A's and finding new ways to shine academically. Jack was athletic and played sports year round. He spent his early mornings going on long runs with Nick.

They were both gifted musically and that was something that their fathers took a lot of pride in. Jack played guitar but they thought he mostly did it to try and impress Maggie. Lucy had been taking piano lessons since she was seven and most mornings she would sit down at the piano while Nick was making breakfast and play until someone pulled her away.

When they were older and more established, they had Grace. She was a quiet seven year old that made her father's melt like ice cubes in a frying pan. It was obvious who her genetic father was, her blonde hair matched Jeff's perfectly but she had miraculously inherited a lot of Nick's personality.

"Okay, dinner?" Jeff asked as he stood up and stretched.

"You cook, apparently my food isn't edible," Nick said as he pushed the empty brown paper bag into the garbage can.

They went downstairs to find Gracie sitting on the piano bench next to Lucy.

"Ok, now find middle C," Lucy said.

Gracie pushed a key and Lucy shook her head.

"That was D, sweets," Jeff said as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "But so close."

"Hi daddy," Lucy said as she spun around on the bench.

"Hi sweetie. How was your day?" he asked as he placed a kiss on top of her head as well.

Lucy shrugged. "I have a lot of homework this weekend because my English teacher thinks that essays should be assigned on Fridays!"

Jeff laughed. "I should have a talk with him; tell him that he's a bad teacher or something."

Lucy grinned. "You're a good teacher dad! Your class is my favorite all day! All my friends think so too."

"That's because all of your friends have a crush on him!" Jack called as he ran through the living room and into the kitchen.

"Shut up, Jack! Or I'll call Maggie!" Lucy threatened.

He laughed at her and bent down to pick up Grace. They all entered the kitchen to find Nick standing in front of the open fridge, staring at it with a bored expression on his face. Jack was seated on the countertop. He had changed out of his muddy clothes and was now wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

Their kitchen was Nick's holy land. When they built this house, right after Nick's first cookbook had sold a million copies, they spent most of their time designing this kitchen. It was all stainless steel and black marble. It made it easy to clean and Jeff liked that. There was an island in the middle of the kitchen where they ate most of their family meals even though they had a formal dining room right through the far doorway.

Grace wiggled out of Jeff's arms and joined her other father at the fridge.

"Daddy can we have pizza?" she asked as she wrapped her arms around Nick's waist. "Not your pizza, the good pizza?"

"I'm with Grace," Jack said as he slid off the counter.

"Me too!" Lucy said as she raised her hand in the air.

Jeff raised both of his hands in the air and hopped up and down. "Me too! Me too!"

Nick's defense broke easily and he nodded his head. He slipped his phone out of his pocket and ordered two pizzas. Jack went off to shower, Lucy decided to get an early start on her English paper and Grace wandered out to the backyard with a bucket of sidewalk chalk.

Once he got off the phone, He found Jeff sitting on the couch in the living room, staring down at a stack of tests. He was tapping his red pen against the table reading over the front page of the test on top of the pile.

Jeff had been teaching English at Renville Academy for almost four years. Before that he bounced around from one school district to another, unhappy and frustrated that no one wanted to give him a permanent position. He decided to go back to school and get his master's degree and as soon as he finished, he landed a job at a more prestigious school than he had attended when he was a teenager.

He watched Jeff for a few quiet moments. He let himself remember the skinny blonde boy that he fell in love with when he was fourteen. The Jeff today was slightly different. He's still skinny and blonde but his face had changed. He now had to actually shave instead of just pretend to whenever Nick did. His eyes had a few more wrinkles around them but as soon as he smiled, they would fade away and fourteen year old Jeff was back.

A memory came flooding back to Nick as Jeff sighed and turned the page on the test he was grading.

Jeff was seated at his desk, across the small dorm room from Nick. He was hunched over his biology textbook, trying desperately to understand how a child ends up with blue eyes and red hair. He had been staring at the chart so long that everywhere he looked he saw the same picture.

"I can't study anymore, I'm getting too smart," Nick said as he leaned back and stretched. "Let's do something."

Jeff yawned and glanced over at Nick before shaking his head.

"I can't, I have a biology test tomorrow and none of this makes any sense to me."

Nick stood up and crossed the room. He sat down on the edge of Jeff's bed and leaned over so he could look at the page Jeff was staring at. He placed one hand on the back of Jeff's chair and another on Jeff's knee to keep himself from falling forward.

"It's this stupid gene thing, I've never understood it," Jeff said as he tapped the chart with his finger.

Nick wasn't paying any attention to Jeff's textbook instead he was slowly sliding his hand up Jeff's thigh. He stopped a few inches short of his goal to massage Jeff's muscles and finally get his full attention.

"Stop, I have to study this," Jeff told him as he tried to push his hand away.

"I'll teach you about biology," Nick said as he slipped off the bed and knelt in front of Jeff.

"Nicky…"Jeff groaned.

His defense was weak; Nick could tell he wanted it as much as he shouldn't. Nick palmed him through his uniform pants and grinned mischievously as he felt Jeff harden instantly.

"Lesson number one," Nick said as he popped open the button on Jeff's pants. Jeff still hadn't moved to make this easier so he knew he really had to sell his boyfriend on this idea of fun. "When I touch you here, it feels good."

Jeff sunk down in his chair and allowed Nick to have slightly better access. It was still an awkward angle but Jeff felt that if he didn't fully give into Nick's temptation than he wasn't completely forgetting about his homework. Nick wrapped his hand around Jeff's dick and gave it a hard stroke.

"Does it feel good baby?"

"Mmmhh," Jeff said as his eyes slipped shut and his mind drifted away from genes and red hair and blue eyes.

Nick shook his head to get rid of the memory. With three kids somewhere in their house, now was not the time to start fantasizing about his husband.

Jeff started scribbling a note at the top of the test and Nick took his opportunity to interrupt him. He sat down next to him and let the side of his body press against Jeff's. Jeff leaned his head over to rest on Nick's as he finished writing his note.

"How'd he do?" Nick asked as he nodded towards the test.

Jeff laughed. "Apparently Romeo and Julie had a great love affair that ended really, really fast because their parents were all kinds of crazy." Nick smiled and looked down at the red letter C. "I'm paraphrasing, of course."

"Teaching Romeo and Juliet to freshman, that's rough," Nick offered as he placed hand on Jeff's thigh.

"Our daughter seemed to understand it just fine," Jeff said as he pulled her test out from the middle of the pile. There was a large red A on the front and Nick smiled proudly.

"Did you grade this one first?"

Jeff nodded as he leaned back against the couch and cuddled closer to Nick.

"I always grade her and Jack's stuff first," he explained. "I can't help it; I get too eager to know if they were paying attention."

"How did Jack do?"

Jeff leaned forward, the action making Nick's hand on his thigh slip higher, and shuffled through the pile until he found Jack's test.

"A minus. He didn't answer the last question."

Nick flipped to the last page and read the question out loud. "What made Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other?"

Jeff nodded and pulled the test away from Nick before setting it back in the pile. He didn't feel entirely comfortable with showing Nick his students work, even if those students were their children.

"It is a slightly ambiguous question, there could be a lot of answers."

Jeff agreed. "It was mostly an opinion question, I counted it right as long as they tried to answer it."

"Why do you think he didn't answer it?" Nick finally asked.

It was interesting that Jack didn't answer the one question on the test that he claimed to experience every day. They never saw it as a strange thing that Jack declared his love for Maggie at such a young age. Most parents would have disregarded it, told their child that they didn't understand love or they were too young but Nick and Jeff refused to do that. They were fourteen when they fell in love so they knew that their son was perfectly capable of experiencing this.

"I was thinking about something earlier," Nick said as he shifted towards Jeff, letting his question remain unanswered.

Jeff wrapped his arm around Nick's shoulder and Nick let his head rest against his husband's chest. Jeff buried his face in the back of Nick's neck, breathing him in and letting the scent he was so familiar with fill him up.

"I was thinking about a day back at Dalton, when we were sophomores."

"You've had that on the mind today, huh?" Jeff asked as he pressed a kiss to the back of Nick's neck.

"Just feeling nostalgic, missing it a little bit."

Nick closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. These moments with Jeff were rare and he fully expected one of their children to interrupt it at any moment. It wasn't a bothersome interruption; Nick learned to appreciate the fact that their kids actually wanted to talk to them, but he couldn't help but miss this alone time.

"I've been thinking about it too," Jeff confessed.

He ran a hand down Nick's arm and let it rest on his bicep. Jeff loved Nick's arms. It was his favorite part of Nick's body and he constantly reminded him of that.

"So what specifically about this day back at Dalton?" Jeff asked as he started to gently massage Nick's arm.

Nick chuckled lightly. "We used to have so much sex."

Jeff nodded and moved so that Nick could sit up and look at him. "Yeah, we did. I'm surprised they never made us change roommates."

"That anniversary is coming up," Nick told him.

"Which one?"

Nick laughed. "The night we had sex for the first time."

Jeff couldn't hold back a smile. "You remember the date?"

His husband nodded, only slightly embarrassed. "Yeah, it'll be this Sunday."

Nick leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Jeff's mouth. It was needy and urgent and it was something that Jeff hadn't felt from Nick in a long time. It wasn't that they didn't kiss anymore. They kissed a lot but it was always simple little pecks of greeting or departure. But this, this was something entirely different, something left behind in their younger days when they had time to focus only on each other.

It was easy to fall out of the habit and both of them worried about it from time to time. It wasn't that they didn't want to be with each other, it was just that their relationship reached a level of intimacy that was more than just physical and they didn't need that reassurance as often.

That didn't mean they didn't want it…

Nick phone started ringing and Jeff pulled away to laugh at his ringtone.

"You are feeling nostalgic," he stated as the chorus of Uptown Girl continued to play.

Nick blushed and pulled his phone out of his pants pocket. "It's Mason, I better stop ignoring him."

Jeff nodded and watched his husband walk away to answer the phone call from his agent.

Nick had been writing since they left high school. He struggled with it, knowing that he wanted to write something that mattered but not being able to find that in the world of fiction. He couldn't paint the picture he wanted to with his characters so he gave up and tried journalism. For a while he wrote articles for an online magazine but it wasn't until he got a part time job at a vegan bakery that he truly found his calling.

His had published four cookbooks, one book that focused on holistic health and his latest project was a book about teaching kids to make healthy life choices.

He had finished the first draft and was currently working on the second. Mason was getting antsy, constantly telling Nick that if he didn't finish by the next day he was going to drop him and find another client. Nick saw through the empty threats and took his time finishing.

"Did you grade my test?" Lucy asked as she came into the living room with her laptop balancing on her arms. She sat down next to her father and set her computer on the table in front of her.

Jeff slid that paper across the table and she grinned at the large A written on the top. "Good job, honey."

"Will you read through my introduction? I don't think it makes a lot of sense," she asked as she set her test down and nodded towards her computer.

"You know it's Friday night, right?" he asked as he picked up her computer and pulled it in his lap. "You should be doing something fun. That's what teenagers do."

She smiled. "I figured if I got this done tonight then you and dad wouldn't say no to me going to the mall with Maggie tomorrow afternoon."

Jeff nodded. "Good negotiation tactics, Lu." He started reading through the first paragraph of her Romeo and Juliet paper. He was already captivated by her topic choice that he was certain she was on her way to writing an A paper. He asked them to explain what the saddest part was in the story and instead of the obvious, Lucy wrote about Paris dying.

"Hey Jeff!" Nick called from his office. "Come here for a minute?"

"This is really good, don't change a thing," Jeff said as he set the computer back on the table and stood up. "Except fix your last sentence, it's a fragment."

He entered Nick's office again and found him still on the phone with Mason. His phone was on the desk in front of him and Nick was furiously typing on his laptop. Mason's boisterous voice was coming from the phone in a rushed and frantic pace.

"It's the chance of a lifetime, there isn't a choice!"

Jeff pointed to the phone and raised his eyebrows. Nick waved him off with a roll of his eyes and continued typing.

"Mason, I need to talk this over with Jeff before I answer you," Nick stated. "I'll call you back later."

He pushed a button on his phone and Mason's voice cut off. He went back to typing something into his computer and Jeff stood at the front of his desk, waiting for him to talk.

"Do you remember when Mason sampled my book at that convention a few weeks ago?" Nick asked.

"Of course, we were really excited that he was using unpublished material when he could have used some of your old stuff. Why?"

Nick stopped typing and looked up at his husband. "Because The Food Network is interested in buying the rights."

Jeff's eyes went wide. "That's incredible!" He pulled Nick out of his chair and hugged him tightly. Nick barely returned the hug and Jeff pulled back, confused.

"Mason wants me in LA by tomorrow afternoon."


End file.
